Jeffrey Whitford, newly promoted Chief Sustainability, Social Responsibility and Inclusion Officer for Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, joins Russ Fordyce to explain how bio-based high-performance liquid chromatography lab solvents that work as one-to-one drop-in replacements won Sustainability Product of the Year at the 2026 BIG Sustainability Awards. He shares the 18-month promise that took six years, why he set out to decommoditize a commodity, and the professor who tried to break the product and could not. Along the way, he covers honest carbon accounting, supplier days, and the simple principle he would give any executive: start somewhere and quantify the impact.

• Guest: Jeffrey Whitford, Chief Sustainability, Social Responsibility and Inclusion Officer for Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-whitford-5419b812
• Website: sigmaaldrich.com

• [00:00] Welcome, and congratulations on the award and the promotion
• [01:12] A 358-year-old company in one minute
• [03:37] Solvents 101 and a 10 percent footprint
• [05:14] Novel substitution versus the drop-in replacement
• [10:52] The bio-based acetonitrile launch
• [13:06] When product managers take ownership
• [14:59] Making the hurdle lower
• [16:47] Why the goal is no green premium
• [20:35] What surprised customers
• [22:59] A seat at the table
• [28:43] One principle: start somewhere and quantify
• [30:07] Closing thoughts and congratulations

• Remove the adoption tax. Whitford's first bio-based solvent asked customers to change how they work, so his team rebuilt it as a one-to-one drop-in. In regulated labs, the greener option wins when nobody has to revalidate a method.
• Decommoditize the boring core product. Solvents are a commodity category, yet they made up about 10 percent of the company's footprint. Differentiating a product everyone must buy, even with a story as surprising as whiskey waste, turns sustainability into a commercial advantage.
• Trust and ownership are the real scoreboard. Whitford calls carbon accounting art and science, and says his job is predicated on trust. The sign it worked was product managers taking ownership, until it was not just a sustainability thing anymore but simply how the business runs.

• MilliporeSigma bio-based HPLC solvent launch announcement
• Trellis: Why MilliporeSigma's sustainability lead sits in on sales pitches
• My Green Lab: Carbon Impact of Biotech and Pharma reports
• Technology Networks: Highlights from My Green Lab's 2025 impact report
• GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard

Congratulations to MilliporeSigma, the U.S. and Canada Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, winner of Sustainability Product of the Year at the 2026 BIG Sustainability Awards. Learn more about the program: Sustainability Awards

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